Winter seems intent on being winter this year. My body seems intent on fighting off illness this February. The rain spits. The rain turns to snow, turns to slush, turns to rain, turns to freezing hail. I move from stomach flu to feeling well to a cold that makes my nose seem like the focus […]
Category: Gratitude
Another morning here
Allergies or cold? Who knows? All I know is I prop my pillows & catch whatever sleep I can & when I wake & have to stand up make lunches & squeeze my youngest awake standing up stops the flow & I breathe while wanting to sleep while wanting all my dreams to have already […]
Bloom
When we opened up our friend’s closed house, the first thing I noticed were the white remains of the Christmas cactus blooms. Underneath the shade-covered window, the dry-stalked hulls crumbled in my hands. Some now-white-past-prime blooms were still attached to the succulent plant. Succulent sounds like abundant water, but this spindly light green cactus was […]
Love Day
Love is in the coffee every single morning. It’s in the way my eldest asks me, “How was your day?” And it’s how my youngest stays with hugs for the longest time. It’s all those texts returned from friends during the witching hour. The witching hour can happen any time of every day and night. […]
Slow Learning
I am having a hard time learning to be slow. To wait for what shows up. To think that if I haven’t arrived already: my time has passed. That word: arrival. I know there isn’t one moment of arrival. And arriving at the big time: a billion clicks: that’s only one kind of arrival. Every […]
To Be Well
I ask directions from my life and it points me in wildly different directions: 4 different jobs. Persimmon tea with a hint of lime. Doing what I’m afraid of from IRAs to teaching adults about creativity. When I was going through a rough patch in college, my friend Annie sent me a letter. In it, […]
January 31st
Everyone is maybe sick of the topic lately. But I can’t get enough of it. Clichés and all. Like my Interviewee that pointed out that by the time your kids are teens, that cake is baked. I very much feel that way while knowing my kind heart is a place my kids will ask to […]
Anger & Love
It’s too late in the day to be poetic. The minutes have gotten away from me but I still have an urge to keep this promise to myself. So here I am 14 hours after I woke: writing to you. I overslept today. I didn’t do my morning writing right away. I found myself struggling […]
Flash Floods
Flash Floods by Nancy Schatz Alton I trace the spaces this life has made in me: the way the underpass, bereft of water feels to my running feet how once the running stopped the orange bike arrived & I rode how I rode in the basement a new path unlike the path I made on […]
Astonishment
There’s so much to love in this world. Did Mary Oliver say that? All her favorite words are in my lexicon— Astonished—How I love to be astonished. How grateful I am by unexpected sightings: Caroline curled up on the couch, studying with her friend. Liz step wholly into herself: saying exactly what she thinks. OK—not […]